Saturday, 3 October 2015

So the family and I took a trip to Vietnam. It is a fantastic holiday destination.

For various reasons, notably income and tax levels, Vietnam's road transport system, particularly within its cities, is predominantly two-wheeled. Where it was once bicycle based, it is now mainly mopeds:

One of our tour guides made the point that traffic engineers there design roads that our terrible for cars because they are mainly thinking about the mopeds (sort of the reverse of what we get). All of the mopeds take a bit of getting used to because they rarely stop. When crossing the road, you have to look straight ahead and just keep your pace. Moped riders can judge where you are going and either nip into the space in front of you or go behind you. It is like a crowd of people running past you.

Although it is unnerving at first, it is in some ways preferable to walking through our cities where your journey is interupted so often for red lights. The negatives are the drone of the bikes and the pollution.

Moped parking is catered for everywhere:

both on street and off street. And some shop-fronts were used as small guarded moped parks.

Everywhere you see small design features that show that two-wheeled users come first:

It is of course not all wonderful. In the time we were there, we saw the fatal aftermaths of two accidents crashes. However in both cases, the rider had been crushed under the wheels of a truck, which only serves as evidence of the inappropriateness of mixing those different forms of transport.

Children got around by themselves everywhere; sometimes walking but most of them seemed to be on bikes. School closing time had them out in droves:

And even tiny schools in villages had plenty of bike parking:

Naturally, we had a go and rode through paddy fields to the beach near Hoi An. We were one bike too short and so supergirl got to ride on the back of mine:

So nice to be able to ride around casually without some sanctimonious busy-body telling you off for what you are or aren't wearing.

Vietnam is one of the 193 countries in the world without bicycle helmet laws but they are required for mopeds. An industry has sprung up manufacturing some cool designs. As a souvenir I bought this leather look Nike knock-off. If you have to wear one, you may as well try and look as good as you can: